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President Obama walking with Vice President Joe Biden in The White House (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

At the center of President Obama's new firearm legislation: background checks with any purchase.

Vice President Joe Biden, who is hosting a week-long summit on guns and violence at the White House, has been convinced that "universal background checks" are a necessity to prevent weapons from falling into the wrong hands, multiple news outlets report. The vice president is expected to suggest a mix of measures including an assault weapon ban and restriction on magazine size that Obama can authorize through executive orders and new legislation.

Today, background checks do not occur every time a weapon is sold. Private sales by unlicensed dealers at gun shows, for example, go unaccounted, as would a permit-carrying American's purchase of a additional firearms.

Universal background checks would surely draw strong criticism from the NRA and other guns-rights advocates. It could dent the business of guns if the restrictions are harsh enough to dissuade gun buyers to purchase weapons. Though, in all reality, if you felt strongly enough about the Second Amendment, a background check would probably not deter you. The background checks would, presumably, go a considerable way on making sure weapons can't be sold to the mentally ill or convicted criminals. New laws on assault weapons—the semi-automatic firearms that anti-violence advocates deplore—and on magazine-size would be more harmful to the gun industry.

Such a ban would mean a direct hit on the Freedom Group, the private equity-backed gunmaker that made the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle discovered at the Newtown, Conn., massacre. Freedom Group is America's largest rifle manufacturer. Smith and Wesson and Sturm, Ruger would also be affected to a lesser degree because a majority of their business comes from pistols. Of course, any sort of universal background checks would require the cooperation of gun retailers like Dick's Sporting Goods, Cabela's and Wal-Mart, which is the nation's largest seller of munitions.